Teenage heartache

In the grocery store the other day I heard a song from when I was fourteen or so. It's funny to look back and think about how serious everything was back then. If a guy looked at you it could be talked about around the lunch table for at least a week. 

It's sweet to remember those times.

Fearless

Plans for Valentine's are already being laid down, two-and-a-half weeks to the big day. I haven't any plans, but I don't care. I am not going to spend this holiday lamenting about what I don't have, but instead celebrating what I do. I have a lot of love in my life. I am incredibly lucky.

I would love to be in love. There's still time for some romance, so I'm not giving up hope. Even if not, I'm choosing to not be afraid anymore. I will not give life to the fears inside my soul. I will instead nurture the hope inside my soul, coaxing it to grow and blossom so that it can take a greater place in my heart than the fears that cloud it most of the time.

I'm choosing to be fearless about whatever the future has to bring. The best I can do is march confidently in the direction of my dreams, and hope for the best.

Small leaps

I own a particularly colorful pair of rainboots. For the first year or so I owned them, I pulled my jeans over them, shy about their brightness. I loved the color and pattern, but I was afraid of what other people would think. 

Today, I tucked my jeans into my rainboots. Not only did it make it so that my jeans stayed dry, but I thought I looked quite fetching. 

Walking to class today, I still felt the same shyness wrap itself around me, but there was a smaller voice that said, who cares what other people think. And if people are going to judge me for my choice of rainboot color, then they probably are not someone I'd want to spend my time with anyway. While it was a small voice, it was enough to keep me from stopping and pulling my jeans back out. 

It is in these tiny ways that I realize I am changing. Perhaps these events seem insignificant, but I spent most of my life terrified of what other people would think. I tucked away parts of my personality for fear that others would judge it. I still worry about people judging me, but I think it is in a more healthy, abstract way rather than a crippling fear. The fact I'm learning that my little decisions lead me to the right people, well I think that's very important. I'm also learning to trust what I want rather than what I think other people want. Because who really knows what other people want? You might as well be true to yourself rather than blindly trying to please as many people as possible. 

Globetrotting

I return from a long trip across shining seas. 

It was lovely. Really lovely. I'm so glad to have been able to have the experience before I am financially on my own and unable to go off on fancy trips without a care in the world. It's strange when you can feel the bits and pieces of your youth slipping away. By and large it is something we only realize after the fact but sometimes I catch the gleam in my eyes or look at my peers and realize that I am aging, despite the fact I don't ever feel any older, not really anyway. 

As much as other places can feel alienating, all I felt was that it is so beautiful to be apart of a world community. No matter where we are on earth, or what language we speak, the vast majority of people have similar life experiences. We cheer for sports teams and meet for dinner and listen to music and fall in love. We go to work and school and do our best to get through each day. And it is the same thing people have been doing for hundreds of years, to one degree or another. It's amazing how, despite the shortness of my life so far, I am apart of the fabric of humanity. It's really beautiful.

And yet even as much as I enjoyed my travels, it makes me even more resolute in my desire to live a rather boring life. I think I could be happy if I never left the same town again, if I married one man and stayed married to him and had some babies and never saw any more of the world. Not that I don't want to see more of the world, but there is a certain comfort in being so sure about what you want in life.

And Lord, I am sure. 

Obligatory New Year's Resolution List

This year my resolutions are relatively simple.

1. Love myself more.

2. Read the bible more.

3. Do more yoga.

4. Focus on what's going right in my life.

5. Be a better friend/girlfriend.